Judge To Hear Democrat's Suit To Toss 15,000 Ballots

November 28, 2000|By Jeff Zeleny, Tribune Staff Writer.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — There are no dimples, no hanging chads, no quarrels over butterfly ballots in Seminole County.

But miles away from the controversies of Palm Beach and Miami-Dade Counties, a political predicament has been brewing for more than two weeks in Central Florida. And on Monday, the case made its way to Tallahassee, where a judge agreed to hear a lawsuit that could throw out enough absentee ballots to tip the election toward Vice President Al Gore.

At least that's what Harry Jacobs hopes.

To understand the story of Seminole County, think back to Nov. 8, the day after the election, when Jacobs walked into the supervisor of elections office in Sanford, the county seat, and volunteered to be a Democratic observer in the automatic statewide recount. His eyes were fixed on ballots, but his ears picked up a conversation between election workers.

This is what he says he heard: The county's chief election official, a Republican, permitted two GOP operatives to set up shop in the county election offices one month before Election Day. Their mission was to salvage 4,700 absentee ballot applications from registered Republicans that had been ruled invalid.

When Jacobs confronted the worker, he alleges in court papers, she locked herself in another office for 45 minutes. He took the case to the Seminole County canvassing board. The board didn't respond to the complaint, so he filed a lawsuit.

In a deposition taken Friday, Election Supervisor Sandra Goard testified that she opened her office to Republican workers in mid-October to complete absentee ballot request forms. For about 10 days, she said, they spent the entire working day using red pens to fill in identification numbers that were missing, ballot-by-ballot.

"We provided them with a chair, they sat at a table with their laptop computer, they took that card and placed the voter registration number on that document," Goard testified. "That document was then processed and the elector was mailed an absentee ballot."

Lawyers for Goard said she did nothing wrong or different from other election officials who allow corrections to be made to absentee ballot requests. Republicans accuse Jacobs of acting as a front for the Gore campaign in pursuing the legal action because Texas Gov. George W. Bush easily won Seminole County and collected 10,006 absentee ballots compared to Gore's 5,209.

"This is Gore-Lieberman throwing so much mud against the wall just hoping something will stick," said James Stelling, vice chairman of the Republican Party of Florida.

Jacobs, a personal injury lawyer, was heckled at protests last week outside a court hearing in Sanford.

But he is unmoved, saying he believes Goard not only saw to it that Bush received more absentee votes than Gore but that she is guilty of a felony for voter fraud. No charges have been filed, and her lawyers say the suggestion is absurd.

"Why were they given access? The answer becomes self-evident: She's had a very cozy relationship with the Republican Party," Jacobs said in an interview Monday. "She allowed the Republicans to set up a satellite office in the voting office. It's like putting strangers in a bank vault."

When Jacobs filed his suit to throw out every absentee ballot in the county, Republicans initially scoffed. One official said it was the political equivalent of a Hail Mary pass in football. Then, a judge agreed to hear the case. And now, nearly three weeks later, the matter is scheduled for trial in Leon County Circuit Court in Tallahassee.

Stelling, also chairman of the Seminole County Republican Party, is livid about the whole affair.

"It's horsefeathers," said Stelling, who has been served a subpoena to testify in the case. "They're not going to prove it. You know it and I know it."

While Jacobs' case is separate from Gore's new legal challenge, the drawn-out presidential election has kept his lawsuit alive. Even though Bush was certified the winner of Florida's electoral votes Sunday night, Jacobs hopes his case is strong enough to help Gore win the state and the presidency.

"We have both the law and the facts on our side," Jacobs said.

The case was unexpectedly moved Monday to Leon County Circuit Court in Tallahassee. The suit was originally scheduled to go to trial Wednesday in Seminole County, but Republicans asked that it be transferred to the capital because the state's election results were already certified and in the hands of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris.

From Orlando, Jacobs and other lawyers hastily hopped a flight just after 2 p.m. They landed in Tallahassee in time to refile the lawsuit, which now also names Harris as a defendant, and it was assigned to Judge Nikki Clark for a hearing as early as Tuesday.

Nat Stern, a professor at Florida State University's College of Law, said he is intrigued by the lawsuit, especially in light of a 1998 state law that tightened the requirements for handling absentee ballots. The Florida Legislature, reeling from a Miami mayor's race that was reversed because of fraudulent absentee ballots, passed a provision that required personal identification numbers on ballot requests.

Because Republicans were allowed to change some ballot requests and Democrats said they were not, Stern said the case raised questions of discrimination and potential violations of equal protection rights. But Stern said he doubts a court would toss out all of the county's 15,000 absentee ballots cast, which is what Jacobs has requested.